LOCATIOROV STATION

  SYSTEM: GLIESE 667

  DATE: 2399

  Harlow luxuriated in the plush chair as he bit into the ripe apple, sav the sweet juice as it ran down his throat. The members of the cil sure did know how to live fortably. He let a little sigh of pleasure escape his lips. “It’s been far too long since I’ve had an apple. Have you ever tasted one, Zhang? And I’m not speaking about the vat-grown shit you spacers call food, but a real p-side grole?”

  Zhang didn’t answer, he only stewed. Harlow gnced over the wooden desk at the man ed to a small ptform below. They were in the once prestigious Court of Affairs building orov Station. It seemed fitting, but his little puppet wasn’t in a very talkative mood, that was a shame.

  Harlow chucked the apple at the big man, hitting him in the leg. “I asked you a question. I expe answer.”

  “No,” the man growled in reply. “I did what you asked of me, why am I in s?”

  “Did you, now?” Harlow asked as he sat up. “When did I ask you to kill Kovalenko and Hoffman?”

  “They would have reported your involvement irials.”

  Harlow ughed and leaned back again, kig his feet up on the expensive wooden desk. “Unlikely. Those two idiots didn’t know I was the one bag them.”

  “I thought you said—,”

  Harlow waggled a fi Zhang. “You thought… see, that’s where you went wrong, Zhang. I don’t pay you to think. I pay you to carry out my orders.”

  The door at the end of the hall creaked open and Ingrid Liu walked in followed by a few more of Harlow’s personnel who had infiltrated station security. Could it even be sidered infiltration if the cil were the ones who hired them under his orders? He shrugged and looked at Ingrid. She stared back at him hungrily.

  The woman was always a bit of a handful, but he knew what she wanted. Ingrid Liu wao be the sole family in charge of Petrov Station. When she had first approached him with her pn, he had been surprised. Surprised she had figured out what ship he was hiding on and that she was audacious enough to e straight to him to suggest it. At the time she wasn’t aware that he was already undermining the station through Zhang, Kovalenko, and Hoffman.

  “Ingrid, it’s been far too long,” Harlow stated as he got up and walked over to the ulling her into a passionate kiss before pushing her back. Ingrid hissed angrily, but not about the rough treatment. He would love to tiheir reunion, but he had important matters to plete.

  Harlow turned back to a very surprised Zhang.

  “See, the thing you don’t uand, Zhang is that I don’t put all my eggs in one basket. …Do you spacers even uand that saying? Probably not. Doesn’t matter.”

  Harlow paused in thought, not because he fot oint he was trying to make but because he liked to build tension. It was so fun watg his victims squirm. “…Where was I? Ah right. You failed me once, but I’m a reasonable man. I uand mistakes are iable. So I give people an opportunity to make amends, to correct their mistakes.”

  He sighed dramatically. “Then you killed Kovalenko and Hoffman, f me to move up my pns before I was ready, which allowed Na to escape. His loss isn’t much of a in the grand scheme, the station is mier all. But it irks me that your careless as caused me distress. Do you know how long I have phis takeover? A long time. And your little stunt put all that in jeopardy because you weren’t afraid for me but for yourself. It’s a good thing I had people in pce already, if not, things might have turned out wildly different. That’s failure wo. A foolish man might think that was just a ce. I didn’t get to be a pirate lord by being foolish though.” Harloed his fingers and the fuards standing around Zhang began to beat him. Not with stun sticks, but with good old-fashioned clubs.

  The big man colpsed to his knees and Harlow raised his hand to forestall more punishment.

  “I’m sorry, I swear I won’t fail you again!” the man wailed in pain.

  “I believe you,” Harlow nodded. “In fact, I’ll eve you go spend some time with Captain Yu and Captain Weiss. her seemed all that cooperative. Perhaps you talk some seo them. If you do, I’ll five this transgression.”

  Another nod to the guards, and they began t Zhang from the room.

  “Ingrid, Dear. Please go make sure Zhang doesn’t screw this up.”

  She smiled, “I would be gd to.”

  After the woman turned, Harlow made a cutting motion across his throat with his thumb. The guard smiled and nodded.

  Ohe room was empty, Harlow dropped bato the chair behind the desk and waited for the rge holo-s to flicker to life. A se much like this one had pyed out a few months ago. The lights outside the hatch started fshing and four filing forms were unched out into space. The st of the families who trolled Petrov Station were now out of his hair.

  He would have loved to keep Captain Liu around but the woman was far too ambitious for her own good. She would have bee trouble at some point, better to just get rid of her now and avoid it altogether.

  All of the first steps in his pn were falling into pce. His chirped as he was watg the st of the life leave the foolish cil members. “What!” he demanded, a the interruption.

  “I would think you’d be in a better mood now that your pns are in motion, Brother.”

  “What do you want, Arkonis? I have more pressing matters to tend to than listening to you.”

  “Oh, nothing much. I found some information you might be ied in trading a favor for. That’s all.”

  Harlow snorted. “What nonsense are you talking about? It would have to be worth more than my fgship for me to even sider you a favor for it instead of cred.”

  “Who knows,” his brother replied cryptically. “Last I checked, you were very eager to learn the whereabouts of that ehat slipped through yrasp. I just happen to know where he is.”

  Harlo. “How? Where?” he demanded. He had learned about Kane back when everyone else had learned about the man. But uhe imbeciles runnirov Station, Harlow had seen his potential right away. The first giveaway was that Omni didn’t get personally involved with useless people. They also didn’t pay out hundreds of millions of credits for nothing. He also had access to information that none of the other parties involved did. Mainly the footage from the one Coal brother’s impnt that his man irov’s security wiped before handing the inal footage over to him. So he knew without a doubt that Kane had been building ons.

  Seeing his fa the doctored footage was a bit surprising. He would have beaten the merary to death for the insult if the idiot hadn’t already met his fate in the cold embrace of space. Luckily, impnts stored the inal footage if you had access to the hardware. His people had extracted the fake eye before the man tumbled out of an airlock.

  If a man like Kane could create ons and improve on Omni’s designs, what else could he do? Harlow wanted him. And he was willing to go to great lengths to acquire his prize.

  “Not until you agree,” his brother said.

  “Fine. Where is Kane?”

  “He’s in a system oher side of STO space. The locals call it Eden’s End. Some of Katalynn’s people have raided the p over the years. Small timers. Not much worth taking, and a rge group of drifters have taken up residen the facility where Kane resides. The tact who reached out to me said Kahem stay. The man has a bleedi. Should be easy enough to force his hand.”

  Bah! Drifters were worse than rats. They scurried everywhere and stole everything that wasn’t bolted down. Even that didn’t stop them all the time. He hated them for the same reasoed the other pirate lords, they took things that should rightfully be his. As for Katalynn, Harlow didn’t have much to say about his female warlord terpart. The woman had the personality of a brid a faatch.

  “Do we have anyone in the area?”

  “I might have some, for the right price.”

  “You take whatever you want from the facility. The only thing I want is Kane. Bring him to me alive and in w order, and you’ll have your favor. Fail… and I might just find myself with one less brother.”

  Arkonis chuckled at that. “I don’t fail. I already have a pn to get to Ka may take a bit though. He has some mercs running prote. Ohey’re gone, I’ll move in.”

  Harlow could wait, he atient man. After all, he had waited many years to get to this point. He wondered what his younger self would say if he could see him now. Harlow somehow doubted the snot-nosed raider, drunk on his own invincibility and enough alcohol to drown a horse would have even sidered anything. His younger self wasn’t much of a pnner or thinker. It had taken being stranded on a nearly dead poid for four months, after a failed attack against an STO battle group, for him to seriously resider his priorities.

  ***

  LOCATION: FLEET HEADQUARTERS

  SYSTEM: SOL

  Admiral Clemont strode down the corridor, scattering Navy personnel as he moved with purpose. He didn’t even bother returning the salutes as he made his way into the feren.

  There was a loud cmor as he opehe door. He let his gaze slide over everyone present as well as the holographic representations filling the other seats.

  “Admiral on deck!” the guard at the door shouted.

  The room went quiet as everyone who was here in person stood and saluted him. This time Clemourhe salute. Then he o the STO leadership who was attendiely.

  “You’re te!” the Chairman stated at the annou.

  The door closed and the marianding guard exited the room.

  “Apologies for my tardiness, representatives. I was receiving a st-minute update ouation with the pirates.”

  “I doubt anything has ged i hour,” the Chairman huffed in annoyance. “Please just get on with this meeting, I have an important dinner party to attend in two hours.”

  Clemont despised the current Chairman from Borrus, then again, he didn’t much like any politis. Too stuck up their own backsides for their own good. “No further attacks,” he stated as he sat down. “That doesn’t meauation isn’t fluid.”

  “You act like this is a war, Admiral. This is just the pirates ag out. They do this from time to time. Soon, they will devolve into infighting amongst their families like they always do. Then the fleet push them back to their borders,” the representative for both Malis and Malik, the twis iau Ceti system responded.

  sidering Tau Ceti was the home system of Omni, he would have thought the representative of that system would be pushing for an all-out war. War meant more profits for Omni after all.

  After a bit of thinking, he recalled a report stating Omni was receiving increased criticism for some of its as. It might be something to look into. While he didn’t care much for the monolithiufacturer, his predecessors had burhe bridges for any other pao even offer a peting product, even if that product might be slightly worse.

  “The previous pirate incursions sted days at most, this incursion is going on two months already. It is also important to hat none of their previous attacks were ever as coordinated as this one. I believe we should treat it as a decration of war and respond accly.”

  His reply received a few polite chuckles from the group of representatives. None of the Navy people present ughed though.

  “The pirates are not the Coalition, Admiral Clemont. Those days are behind us. They reside on one rocky p beyond the rim. To treat them as anything other than an annoyance would be to aowledge they have actual power. We will not be doing that unless your purpose is to make us look inpetent. Or do you think a handful of ships are capable of standing against the bined navies of the STO?”

  “They hold three former STO systems a stations, Chairman.”

  Clemont could see the man roll his eyes. “They took three border worlds whose navies were made up of Coalitioriates and a handful of undefeations. Those systems were likely filled with traitors already. I say let them suffer the hubris of their as, then they might learn from this. Or is this thirst for revenge a result of the bloody hey gave one of the smaller task groups?”

  The Admiral froze at that.

  “Yes, I’ve read the reports as well, Admiral. Yet you want us to decre war ohe cost to activate our fleets and move them out there would outweigh the value of those systems. We should have let the Coalitiohem. All they do is drain our resources without providing any tangible be.”

  Clemont wao yell at the man and ask him whose fault that was. The STO leadership during the war had stripped almost all industries from the former Coalition worlds, f them to rebuild from scratch. It was done in the name of f a sting peace, but he k had been doo ehose ps never became a threat ever again. Given the choice, he might have made the same decision back then, aed that thought.

  “So we just abandon them?” Clemont asked, doing his best to hide his irritation, apparently, it wasn’t good enough.

  “Watch your tone, Admiral. You be repced. Do you know the st time I spoke with the representatives of Zarinsk, Pravda, and Volnaya, Admiral?”

  He couldn’t imagihe pary governors of those captured systems unicated with the STO very often. “No, Chairman.”

  “It was at our st summit. Do you know which governors tacted me after news of this attack made its way through the Q work?”

  He was forced to reply in the ive again, which seemed to be what the Chairman had been aiming for with his questions.

  “Every overnor reached out to me except those three. Now what is more likely, Admiral? That the multiple Q arrays on each of those ps were taken offline simultaneously, or that those two governors and the people in charge on those worlds are allied with the pirates?”

  Clemont tightened his jaw but answered the leading question. “That they have allied with pirates.”

  None of the other pary representatives seemed all that shocked by this revetion.

  “Exactly. So now they get to live with the sequences of their as for a time. But I never said we were abandoning those systems. I just don’t see the point of expending resources to retake them at the moment. Like I said before, the pirates will likely colpse on their own in short order like they always do. Ohat happens, the fleets will be io take advantage of their disanization to recapture those worlds and arrest the traitors who turhem over to pirates in the first pce. That doesn’t mean we won’t do anything right now. The representatives have agreed that we should increase the fleet presen the systems on those borders by twenty pert. This will reinforce the border without leaving the rest of the systems undefended. Don’t you agree?”

  Twenty pert? That was two ships per strike group. He swallowed his pride and replied. “Yes, Chairman. I will start issuing orders to increase guards along that border. Is that all?”

  “No. Another is these rumors that the pirate ships are dispyiain desigs of Shi in. you firm if this is true? I thought the st time a Shi vessel otted anywhere was in 2350.”

  “2358,” Admiral Clemont corrected, earning a warning gre from the Chairman.

  As for what the Chairman asked, he didn’t believe it to be a rumor. One of the STO battle groups had entered a pirate fleet of a simir size. The same ohe Chairman so blithely stated as having received a bloody nose. While the ships that were engaged were models from back during the war and not the newer ships that patrolled the core systems, what should have been a one-sided battle iO’s favor had turned into a slugging match. This was unheard of in any previous e with the teologically inferior pirates. After losing two ships, the STO pulled bad retreated from the system, causing that system to fall to the pirates.

  “Those rumors are unfirmed at the moment,” he stated.

  That was teically true.

  While the analysts were still p over the footage they received whetered fleet made it back to the Navy yard, Clemont had already seen the footage of the battle. He was old enough that he had been i fleet e with the Shi in Varlen before the furry bastards retreated into the dark. The distinct sensor profile of Shi ons fire was burned into his memory. He really hoped the analysis of the bat footage came back false, but he somehow doubted that to be the case. If his aging mind wasn’t pying tricks on him, he would very much like to know how the pirates had gotten their hands on Shi railguns and missiles.

  Every attempt to unicate with the aliens before they withdrew from this area of space had bee with hostilities. Had they e back? Or had the pirates recovered a derelict ship for study? It wasn’t out of the question, studying a recovered Shi wreck was how the STO had discovered artificial gravity.

  If the pirates had access to Shi tech, their threat would rise precipitously and they would be able to match the STO’s current geion of ships. If he had free rein, he would take the first and sed fleets and wipe the pirates out at their homeworld, leaving no survivors. Unfortunately, he was bound by his oath to follow the STO leadership's orders, no matter how much he disagreed.

  He had hoped his tenure as Admiral would end in an era of general peace. But it seems that would not be the case.